Telltale, Inc.

Overview

San Rafael-based Telltale Games, founded in October 2004, is led by a trio of ex-LucasArts employees: Dan Connors, CEO and former producer/director at LucasArts; Kevin Bruner, Chief Technology Officer who helped develop the engines for many prominent LucasArts titles; and Troy Molander, former director of the LucasArts Technical Art Department.

The studio develops games based on existing intellectual properties except for their first game. The core focus is adventure games, initially only for the PC, but later also for the Xbox 360 and the Wii. The first release was the casual poker game Telltale Texas Hold'em (2005). Next, they created the two episodes in the Bone series, adapted from Jeff Smith's comics: Bone: Out from Boneville (2005) and Bone: The Great Cow Race (2006). Both games were made available as digital downloads and physical copies. Although more episodes were originally planned, no new ones were eventually released. Through the learning process Telltale also updated the second episode's interface and engine, and released an updated version for the first episode. In between, they did the 4th and 5th CSI game: 3 Dimensions of Murder (Windows - 2006, PS2 - 2007) and Hard Evidence (Windows, Xbox 360 - 2007). Telltale also took on an advisory role for Ankh (2006).

Between October 2006 and April 2007 the company released Sam & Max: Season One, a series of episodic games based on Steve Purcell'sSam & Max comics. Season 1 consists of six games and part of the development was funded by digital content distributor GameTap, granting the company to offer the episodes through its website prior to a global release (usually for about two weeks). In November 2007 a second season of five episodes was started. It ran until April 2008. Both series can also be ordered as a physical copy directly from the site and there was a retail release of the seasons in selected regions.

Before the last episode was released, the company announced a new series of five games, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, based on the online Homestar Runner body of work. The first episode, Homestar Ruiner, was released in August 2008. Next to the PC version, it was also the company's first Wii game and was offered through Nintendo's WiiWare service.

In March 2009 the studio released the first episode in a new series: Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures, based on the characters from a series of British animated short films.

Having become an icon of the adventure scene, Telltale also sells digital download versions of other adventures through their online shop. The company is known for releasing its games in different episodes, a practice CEO Dan Connors refers to as "license incubation" to build up and tweak a franchise step by step.

Related Web Sites

Appletell returns to Monkey Island (An interview between the Mac oriented news site Appletell, Telltale's CEO and founder Dan Connors, and designer/programmer Mark Darin, about the development and release of the company's games on the Macintosh platform, particularly regarding Tales of Monkey Island. The interview is presented both as a textual transcription and as a more extensive YouTube video (Feb. 11th, 2010).)

Telltale Games Tells All (An exclusive interview between Mac oriented podcast iGame Radio and Telltale Games' Matt Darin, Will Armstrong, and Chris Schmidt about the decision to port its library to the Macintosh platform and the porting process itself. As Tales of Monkey Island was the only series ported at the time of the interview, particular focus is payed to it (Feb. 13th, 2010).)